She wrote “To Kill a Mockingbird,” it was released in 1960, and she hasn’t published a book since. Her most significant published work in the past 50 years is a letter about reading as a child, written for O, The Oprah Magazine in 2006. If not as reclusive as author J.D. Salinger, who was rarely seen in the 59 years that lapsed between “Catcher in the Rye” and his death in 2010, public appearances are sparse. She turned 85 on Thursday, and she never grants interviews — last year, a British reporter tracked her to the southern Alabama town where she lives, she thanked him for a box of chocolates and that was the entire interview.

A more common response to interview requests has been a quick two-word reply: “Hell, no.”